Booming out?
The post-WWII baby boom — which, at the time, spurred fears of overpopulation — is now a very distant memory, as new analysis suggests that America could face the opposite problem moving into the 2100s.
While a slight acceleration in population growth was observed in 2022, up from the slowest rate on record the year prior, projections out this week from the Census Bureau see America’s long streak of expansion grinding to a halt by the 21st century’s end. Indeed, the US population could be shrinking by as early as 2080, after peaking at 369 million, in the bureau’s central scenario.
Make America Grow Again
This marks the first time that the bureau has forecast a decline for the coming decades — with the only other recorded population decline in the US occurring in 1918, amidst a deadly Spanish flu outbreak and a World War.By contrast with 2015’s and 2018’s optimistic outlooks, the stark shift in 2023’s projection reflects a decline in birth rates, higher death rates (due to an increasingly aging population, as well a COVID-related spike), and a reliance on immigration as a driving factor for growth.
With America's well of young workers expected to dry up as a result of these determining forces, it's easy to imagine the US economy bearing the brunt of a smaller society — like Japan, Italy and many other countries.
